Yep. Sadly, the day Google+ launched, I heard everyone saying "oh, finally, I will use Google+ the right way and not be as promiscuous as I was on myspace and then facebook". A week later, they all basically have as many "friends" as they could possibly have gathered. Imagine how useless a personal address book would be if it simply contained every email address or house address of every single person on earth. It'd kind of undermine the entire point of keeping an address book.
To be fair, artists and journalists will flock to any place that they can get more eyeballs and attention. That doesn't exactly bode well for a social network. Haven't we already had three or more big social networks that were all about meaningless popularity by watching that little number by your name increase? Telling me that a bunch of brand-building attention-whores are flocking to a place that makes it easy for them to broadcast widely to the masses of sycophants doesn't particularly stir my interest as much as it would if you told me that they were avoiding it, because it caters more toward meaningful one-to-one or one-to-a-few real relationships than mass-appeal brand-building "look at all my followers" self-indulgence.
Of course, the clever part about Google+ is that they're implementing what I've been saying should have been implemented for many years, now. The question is how people will use it. I have a feeling that attention-whores and the navel-gazing tech-industry pundits who are all about their "brand" and "followers" and "klout" will continue to use it like they do every other service. I can only hope that their use of it that way does not inform the use of the rest of society, who may finally have a chance to grow out of their former social networking usage and land into Google+ with a bit more of a grown-up mindset where it truly is just a tool to facilitate meaningful relationships and communication instead of another "talk at me" device.
Your parties must suck, if you put them together the way people utilize their social networks. Why invite meaningful, interesting, fun people that you know well and want to be around and spend time with when you could invite every person you've ever shared a school with, met at a conference or convention, dated, met through an ex, or worked at the same company with? After all, it's not the quality of the party or the guests that matters as much as the number of people who attend, so your ego can be boosted, right?
That's pretty spot-on and you said in one line what sadly took me a couple paragraphs to convey elsewhere, in this thread. Social networking seems to be very anti-social, to me, because it is less about "you and I should have a conversation" and more about "let me broadcast my every thought and action to dozens, hundreds, or thousands of people who surely must find me absolutely fascinating". It is impersonal, thoughtless, inane, and self-serving.
There is rarely something one needs to say that must be broadcast to every friend, family member, colleague, ex girlfriend, acquaintance, or schoolmate from twenty years earlier. There is rarely something that needs to be said to all family members or just all colleagues. Certainly not enough that you need an entire social network to facilitate it.
Social-networking seems to be all about the broadcaster. Despite being touted as otherwise, it's mostly unidirectional. I will have a conversation with you, but I won't sit idly by and consume the bits of scrap that you throw out every hour or two, like I'm some fan subscribed to the Ashton Kutcher fan-club.
It seems to me that social networking is a tool developed to answer the wrong problem. How do I communicate with hundreds of people as simply and efficiently as possible? Well, I would posit that you should be instead figuring out who among those hundreds are people you actually need to communicate with?
Frankly, social networking has a lot more in common with blogging than it does with socializing.
Works for me. When your account is deleted or there's any number of problems that impede your use of the service or use of proprietary communication tools, you can go ahead and just email me. Oh, and unlike on every social network (except maybe LinkedIn), I actually will be the only one *not* getting spam. It's unusual to have a day where a piece of spam has found its way past the filtering and into my inbox, while about 99% of the social networking updates are direct spam, a quiz, inane self-promotion, random drivel, drama, application spam, and so on -- not to mention the actual in-page advertising carried by the social networks themselves.
Also, nice try to "one of us, one of us" me - but I don't really care if you use a social network or not. It's fine if you want the chore of wading through all the cruft for very few diamonds and substituting various means of communication with a proprietary service offered by a data-mining and advertising company (ie, all social networking services). That's your choice. Just as it's my choice not to participate and set a minimal bar for people looking to use up some of my time by *gasp* asking them to email me, instead.
I once thought that I'd utilize some social networking tools as simple ways to keep a stream of interesting things to check out from interesting people, when I had a moment to fill. Unfortunately, even the most interesting people can't help but have a terrible signal to noise ratio. I've found that almost everyone I attempted to follow on Twitter or Buzz or elsewhere because they were "thought leaders" or "content curators" or "conversation starters" utilized these social networking tools the same way everyone else does. To post inanity and drivel.
Scoble, for example. He tends to be one of the most popular guys on any of these networks. He usually has something interesting to say and posts plenty of interesting links. Unfortunately, he also posts plenty of inane comments, location updates, photos I don't care about, and so on. There is some signal there, but it's floating in a sea of noise. These people often also use the same account for personal content. So even if you're incredibly interesting, I'm having to spin through all the updates about you and your friends and your life just to get to that great link about a technology or current event that you have an interesting quip about.
What I discovered was that even the most interesting and well-spoken or well-written among us become less so when the distance from conception to distribution is reduced. I follow the RSS feeds of these people, but not their social networking and twitter feeds. When they have to sit down and put some thought into something, it turns out more interesting and without the noise. A blog post becomes more valuable and thoughtful and worthwhile than a twitter post or social networking post. A full article often becomes more meaningful than a mere blog post.
This isn't anything new. That is why editors exist, after all.
I will concede, however, that Google+ and "circles" might alleviate some of this, eventually. If Scoble (just the most ready example in my head) has the tools to separate his meat posts from his quips and his personal communications and is willing to utilize the tools that way, then things could improve. Of course, will everyone else that you follow be just as thoughtful in their use? Or will they just continue to spam the shit out of every single contact they've ever had with an animated cat photo or passive-aggressive comment about someone they're in a relationship with?
The signal to noise ratio on the receiving end is absolutely not worth the time and investment. Nor is the whole privacy and data farming concern. I don't generally have anything worth throwing out into the river of information in the other direction, either. The difference is that while most of the people in my feed will post things anyway, I realize that I'm not posting anything of real value and will therefore simply not post it.
Yes, people may occasionally post something with a degree of value, but it is always drowned out by the inane and self-involved comments. I am not willing to put up with 300 posts about your cat, child, lunch, repeated talking points on illegal immigration, or amateur photography for that one comment that my stir a discussion or be somehow useful.
Because of my former projects, my identity will be falsely claimed by someone else should I not do it first. I also recognize that for many people, going to Facebook and searching for someone is the absolute only way they know of to attempt to contact someone. So it does serve as an index, of sorts. And that's what I use it for. If someone searches for me via some key information, they'll see a note that tells them how to contact me.
The problem with social networking is that it's rather anti-social. It's not about discussion or community or friendship. It's about me. Look at me. Think about me. Listen to me. See how cool I am? See how many friends I have? See how many comments I get on what I post? See how often I post? See my Klout ranking? See how many tweets I've written? See how many photos there are of me? Take my quiz. Indulge my passive-agressive vague comments about things in my life that you don't care about. Help me build the brand that is moi.
If I have something of value to say, I will email you and those it involves. I might even IM you. Hell, I might even call you. Or come visit you. That doesn't sound anti-social, to me. I don't assume that everyone needs to know everything about me at all times of the day. I don't need to mass-broadcast everything. I can give some thought to my communication and direct it at those to whom it is appropriate. I'd expect the same consideration, in return. Six hundred people on your friend list don't need to know your everything or how your relationship is going. Your best friends might, though. So call your best friend and talk it over with them. Don't broadcast it to everyone.
And yes, I understand that Google+ facilitates a better use of social networking than others have before, by the implementation of circles. I'm in favor of that. I'm in favor of narrowing your band of communication and focusing it as much as possible on the relevant audience. Although, it's unfortunate that we think of people we know as an "audience". And therein lies much of the problem - most people use social networks as a stage on which to perform for an audience. Not a tool for communication. And when it comes to communication, the proprietary social network system doesn't really do much that the distributed and non-proprietary email system doesn't already do.
Ultimately, the problem with social networking is over-exposure. Haven't we all had a friend that we became roommates with? Or a girlfriend that we let move in with us? The proximity and over-exposure to people can have a severe negative impact. When you have to make at least the slightest effort for someone's attention or company, you tend to get along and have some respect for each other and enjoy each other's company. When they're constantly within arm's reach, piling up dirty dishes in the kitchen, taking a dump with the bathroom door open, leaving their clothes all over the floor of your home, and constantly yapping on the phone all day -- they become an annoyance. You don't appreciate their company. You lose interest in and respect for them.
Likewise, I get along with my neighbor, because we just talk occasionally. Sometimes we help each other out with a chore or check each other's mail while out of town. I like my ne
I intend to use Google+ the same way I use every other social networking site. I'll create an account to claim my own identity, then disable as many features as possible, then post a message that states that I do not use the service and that if you want to talk to me, you should email me.
On Steam, the games are promoted with giant images and a discount on the front page every time you visit the site.
On XBLA, finding where the Indie games are is a game in itself. Hell, sometimes even finding a non-indie game that just doesn't happen to be promoted well is difficult. They can't be wasting all that space advertising videogames, after all. They need that precious space so they can sell their paying customers repulsive AXE body spray, beef jerky, cell phone plans, and advertise the latest shitty romantic comedy featuring people you've never heard of.
One in three U.S. high school students say the press ought to be more restricted, and even more say the government should approve newspaper stories before readers see them, according to a survey being released today.
The survey of 112,003 students finds that 36% believe newspapers should get "government approval" of stories before publishing; 51% say they should be able to publish freely; 13% have no opinion.
Asked whether the press enjoys "too much freedom," not enough or about the right amount, 32% say "too much," and 37% say it has the right amount. Ten percent say it has too little.
The survey of First Amendment rights was commissioned by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and conducted last spring by the University of Connecticut. It also questioned 327 principals and 7,889 teachers.
The findings aren't surprising to Jack Dvorak, director of the High School Journalism Institute at Indiana University in Bloomington. "Even professional journalists are often unaware of a lot of the freedoms that might be associated with the First Amendment," he says.
The survey "confirms what a lot of people who are interested in this area have known for a long time," he says: Kids aren't learning enough about the First Amendment in history, civics or English classes. It also tracks closely with recent findings of adults' attitudes.
"It's part of our Constitution, so this should be part of a formal education," says Dvorak, who has worked with student journalists since 1968.
If the only reason you weren't going through the machines as it was is because you didn't want someone keeping an archive of your naughty bits, then you were standing up for the wrong reason. Treat it as any other aspect of your privacy. Exercise it. I won't go through the machines for the same reason I don't just invite an officer into my house or give an officer a reason to snoop around my car. Rights are meaningless if you don't exercise them.
I never heard Joe Sixpack concerned about the tech sector, even during the most trying times of outsourcing, reductions, implosions, etc. Joe Sixpack and the rest of the world only cards when it's auto workers or manufacturing or the person who folds pants at the GAP.
I obviously hope for a better economy for everyone across the board. Lifting all boats and such. However, I don't have any particular concern for Joe Sixpack over anyone else.
It's not enough to point out to those benefiting from government welfare that they are doing so, but that they are really benefiting from their fellow taxpayer. Maybe when you're in line for your food stamps or taking your half-dozen snot-nosed brats for free medical care, you'll have less of a sense of entitlement and less contempt for those people handing over their hard-earned money to help you the fact that it's brought to your courtesy of the rest of the people on your block is stamped on every dollar of stamps, every medical card, and every piece of government cheese.
What's sickening is that while continuing to rape their funding, Obama greeted the astronauts this week (I think it was on Friday morning, when they have a song or celebrity wake them up) with a speech about how much we value their efforts and how that's why he's laid out new goals for NASA, including going to MARS.
The fucking hypocrisy of saying that at all is repulsive, much less saying it to their faces. It's like telling the division of employees you're going to lay off next week, about how important they are to you and what amazing things you have planned for them to do for the company, in your meeting this week.
I guess that's why all these military actions we have going on at ridiculous expense and no benefit to humanity are so popular. We need to find a way to measure space exploration and scientific discovery in terms of dead brown people, I suppose.
Wow, you're taking the "we ain't got no reason ta' be explorin' no space when there's goddamn potholes in fronta muh house" thing literally.
When it comes down to it, exploration is what has kept our species alive, so far. It's who we are and it's what will keep us from expiring. We have one planet. One home. No backup. If something goes down here, it's the end for every last one of us. To put it bluntly, I'll take furthering our reach into space and eventual ability to leave this festering shithole to strengthen our chances as a species into the future by even one-ten-thousandth of a percent over expanding or repairing a road for a bunch of fat fucking SUVs to slodge fat asses from one city to another any day of the week.
The financial rewards for commercial space exploration are so fucking far off that I don't see things like SpaceX becoming useful for a very long time. If we depend on commercial enterprise to get us somewhere - where space is concerned - we are doomed for the foreseeable future. I agree with the notion of private industry over big government every day of the week, but space is an endeavor that won't benefit commercial investment in the time-frame that commercial enterprises expect returns on those investments. It's an endeavor that speaks to who we are as a species and it's a shame we're trying to reduce it to pointing the finger at "commercial enterprise" and saying "well, they'll probably do it for us" as an excuse to maintain the "fix potholes durp durp durp!" attitude.
All of these billionaires like to float daydreams in the media about space hotels and space travel. None of that is going to pay the bills for our lifetime or the next generation's or the one after that. In a world of companies only looking forward to the next quarter, just how likely is it that a company is going to sink infinite resources into developing things like relaunchable spacecraft (that can do more than just skim the edge of space) in the expectation that they'll be able to start making real money in a century or two?
Then stop spending all the fucking gold you bring in, plus more that you aren't bringing in. Spending more rather than spending wisely is a pretty fucking idiotic idea.
The thing I love most about gaming is ENTERING FUCKING LONG CODES and dealing with complex registration and login bullshit (UBI and EA tend to be the most fucking convoluted).
No, it's not. It's free for ONE PERSON who uses that new copy of the game. Let's say you you're underage and have siblings? Or you have a spouse who games? Or maybe you have roommates or live in a sort of "house of dudes"? Having to pay another $10 for each person to be allowed to play (not to mention, possibly charging separately for each piece of DLC *per person*, depending on the particular piece of DLC in question) is bullshit.
Imagine if you bought Monopoly at the store for $10. You set it out and got the game ready to play. And then you had to pay another $30 so the other three people could be allowed to play. Or maybe if your cable company charged you $500/mo for cable television, because there are four people in your household instead of just one person watching content. Or handing your spouse a copy of a book you just read and they have to pay another $30 to read it.
The problem with all of these companies and all of this nickel-and-dime-ing bullshit is that they're fucking over the primary customer. The customer who is WILLING TO PAY FULL PRICE FOR THEIR GAME IN THE FIRST PLACE.
Yes, a whopping $700 billion per decade. Wow. Why, at $70 billion per year, it'd only take about 107 years before we've saved as much as we spent on all those failed stimulus packages and bailouts! And it would only take about ten years to save as much as we spend in a single year on the social programs you mentioned.
Yes, why make big meaningful cuts, when we can make a trivial one that looks good on the evening news?
Of course, we should cut everywhere we can, but let's stop being pussies about this. Cut these extra nukes. Cut military spending. Cut social security. Cut whatever the fuck has to be cut to bring spending down to an amount lower than revenue. Period. There's no way to make cuts that will be painless to absolutely everyone, so let's stop bullshitting ourselves about "well, we can't cut this, because all those government employees will be out of a job" and "now muh gramma gonna have to choose between her tv dinners and her medication durp durp".
That comment makes no sense. You're basically saying that they built their business on 1997 technology, so there's no reason it shouldn't still be profitable in 2011.
Frankly, I am surprised that so many of my fellow geeks who are presumably my age or even younger are throwing such a fit over fucking DVDs in 2011. I can understand your grandma using DVDs. Maybe even more mom, depending on your age. But DVDs are such a hassle. My home entertainment sees a DVD even less often than any of my computers see a CD. I think I bought the Planet Earth series on BluRay when I got my first PS3, back in 2006. That's probably the last time.
Slashdot Mirror
Yep. Sadly, the day Google+ launched, I heard everyone saying "oh, finally, I will use Google+ the right way and not be as promiscuous as I was on myspace and then facebook". A week later, they all basically have as many "friends" as they could possibly have gathered. Imagine how useless a personal address book would be if it simply contained every email address or house address of every single person on earth. It'd kind of undermine the entire point of keeping an address book.
To be fair, artists and journalists will flock to any place that they can get more eyeballs and attention. That doesn't exactly bode well for a social network. Haven't we already had three or more big social networks that were all about meaningless popularity by watching that little number by your name increase? Telling me that a bunch of brand-building attention-whores are flocking to a place that makes it easy for them to broadcast widely to the masses of sycophants doesn't particularly stir my interest as much as it would if you told me that they were avoiding it, because it caters more toward meaningful one-to-one or one-to-a-few real relationships than mass-appeal brand-building "look at all my followers" self-indulgence.
Of course, the clever part about Google+ is that they're implementing what I've been saying should have been implemented for many years, now. The question is how people will use it. I have a feeling that attention-whores and the navel-gazing tech-industry pundits who are all about their "brand" and "followers" and "klout" will continue to use it like they do every other service. I can only hope that their use of it that way does not inform the use of the rest of society, who may finally have a chance to grow out of their former social networking usage and land into Google+ with a bit more of a grown-up mindset where it truly is just a tool to facilitate meaningful relationships and communication instead of another "talk at me" device.
Your parties must suck, if you put them together the way people utilize their social networks. Why invite meaningful, interesting, fun people that you know well and want to be around and spend time with when you could invite every person you've ever shared a school with, met at a conference or convention, dated, met through an ex, or worked at the same company with? After all, it's not the quality of the party or the guests that matters as much as the number of people who attend, so your ego can be boosted, right?
That's pretty spot-on and you said in one line what sadly took me a couple paragraphs to convey elsewhere, in this thread. Social networking seems to be very anti-social, to me, because it is less about "you and I should have a conversation" and more about "let me broadcast my every thought and action to dozens, hundreds, or thousands of people who surely must find me absolutely fascinating". It is impersonal, thoughtless, inane, and self-serving.
There is rarely something one needs to say that must be broadcast to every friend, family member, colleague, ex girlfriend, acquaintance, or schoolmate from twenty years earlier. There is rarely something that needs to be said to all family members or just all colleagues. Certainly not enough that you need an entire social network to facilitate it.
Social-networking seems to be all about the broadcaster. Despite being touted as otherwise, it's mostly unidirectional. I will have a conversation with you, but I won't sit idly by and consume the bits of scrap that you throw out every hour or two, like I'm some fan subscribed to the Ashton Kutcher fan-club.
It seems to me that social networking is a tool developed to answer the wrong problem. How do I communicate with hundreds of people as simply and efficiently as possible? Well, I would posit that you should be instead figuring out who among those hundreds are people you actually need to communicate with?
Frankly, social networking has a lot more in common with blogging than it does with socializing.
Works for me. When your account is deleted or there's any number of problems that impede your use of the service or use of proprietary communication tools, you can go ahead and just email me. Oh, and unlike on every social network (except maybe LinkedIn), I actually will be the only one *not* getting spam. It's unusual to have a day where a piece of spam has found its way past the filtering and into my inbox, while about 99% of the social networking updates are direct spam, a quiz, inane self-promotion, random drivel, drama, application spam, and so on -- not to mention the actual in-page advertising carried by the social networks themselves.
Also, nice try to "one of us, one of us" me - but I don't really care if you use a social network or not. It's fine if you want the chore of wading through all the cruft for very few diamonds and substituting various means of communication with a proprietary service offered by a data-mining and advertising company (ie, all social networking services). That's your choice. Just as it's my choice not to participate and set a minimal bar for people looking to use up some of my time by *gasp* asking them to email me, instead.
I once thought that I'd utilize some social networking tools as simple ways to keep a stream of interesting things to check out from interesting people, when I had a moment to fill. Unfortunately, even the most interesting people can't help but have a terrible signal to noise ratio. I've found that almost everyone I attempted to follow on Twitter or Buzz or elsewhere because they were "thought leaders" or "content curators" or "conversation starters" utilized these social networking tools the same way everyone else does. To post inanity and drivel.
Scoble, for example. He tends to be one of the most popular guys on any of these networks. He usually has something interesting to say and posts plenty of interesting links. Unfortunately, he also posts plenty of inane comments, location updates, photos I don't care about, and so on. There is some signal there, but it's floating in a sea of noise. These people often also use the same account for personal content. So even if you're incredibly interesting, I'm having to spin through all the updates about you and your friends and your life just to get to that great link about a technology or current event that you have an interesting quip about.
What I discovered was that even the most interesting and well-spoken or well-written among us become less so when the distance from conception to distribution is reduced. I follow the RSS feeds of these people, but not their social networking and twitter feeds. When they have to sit down and put some thought into something, it turns out more interesting and without the noise. A blog post becomes more valuable and thoughtful and worthwhile than a twitter post or social networking post. A full article often becomes more meaningful than a mere blog post.
This isn't anything new. That is why editors exist, after all.
I will concede, however, that Google+ and "circles" might alleviate some of this, eventually. If Scoble (just the most ready example in my head) has the tools to separate his meat posts from his quips and his personal communications and is willing to utilize the tools that way, then things could improve. Of course, will everyone else that you follow be just as thoughtful in their use? Or will they just continue to spam the shit out of every single contact they've ever had with an animated cat photo or passive-aggressive comment about someone they're in a relationship with?
The signal to noise ratio on the receiving end is absolutely not worth the time and investment. Nor is the whole privacy and data farming concern. I don't generally have anything worth throwing out into the river of information in the other direction, either. The difference is that while most of the people in my feed will post things anyway, I realize that I'm not posting anything of real value and will therefore simply not post it.
Yes, people may occasionally post something with a degree of value, but it is always drowned out by the inane and self-involved comments. I am not willing to put up with 300 posts about your cat, child, lunch, repeated talking points on illegal immigration, or amateur photography for that one comment that my stir a discussion or be somehow useful.
Because of my former projects, my identity will be falsely claimed by someone else should I not do it first. I also recognize that for many people, going to Facebook and searching for someone is the absolute only way they know of to attempt to contact someone. So it does serve as an index, of sorts. And that's what I use it for. If someone searches for me via some key information, they'll see a note that tells them how to contact me.
The problem with social networking is that it's rather anti-social. It's not about discussion or community or friendship. It's about me. Look at me. Think about me. Listen to me. See how cool I am? See how many friends I have? See how many comments I get on what I post? See how often I post? See my Klout ranking? See how many tweets I've written? See how many photos there are of me? Take my quiz. Indulge my passive-agressive vague comments about things in my life that you don't care about. Help me build the brand that is moi.
If I have something of value to say, I will email you and those it involves. I might even IM you. Hell, I might even call you. Or come visit you. That doesn't sound anti-social, to me. I don't assume that everyone needs to know everything about me at all times of the day. I don't need to mass-broadcast everything. I can give some thought to my communication and direct it at those to whom it is appropriate. I'd expect the same consideration, in return. Six hundred people on your friend list don't need to know your everything or how your relationship is going. Your best friends might, though. So call your best friend and talk it over with them. Don't broadcast it to everyone.
And yes, I understand that Google+ facilitates a better use of social networking than others have before, by the implementation of circles. I'm in favor of that. I'm in favor of narrowing your band of communication and focusing it as much as possible on the relevant audience. Although, it's unfortunate that we think of people we know as an "audience". And therein lies much of the problem - most people use social networks as a stage on which to perform for an audience. Not a tool for communication. And when it comes to communication, the proprietary social network system doesn't really do much that the distributed and non-proprietary email system doesn't already do.
Ultimately, the problem with social networking is over-exposure. Haven't we all had a friend that we became roommates with? Or a girlfriend that we let move in with us? The proximity and over-exposure to people can have a severe negative impact. When you have to make at least the slightest effort for someone's attention or company, you tend to get along and have some respect for each other and enjoy each other's company. When they're constantly within arm's reach, piling up dirty dishes in the kitchen, taking a dump with the bathroom door open, leaving their clothes all over the floor of your home, and constantly yapping on the phone all day -- they become an annoyance. You don't appreciate their company. You lose interest in and respect for them.
Likewise, I get along with my neighbor, because we just talk occasionally. Sometimes we help each other out with a chore or check each other's mail while out of town. I like my ne
I intend to use Google+ the same way I use every other social networking site. I'll create an account to claim my own identity, then disable as many features as possible, then post a message that states that I do not use the service and that if you want to talk to me, you should email me.
On Steam, the games are promoted with giant images and a discount on the front page every time you visit the site.
On XBLA, finding where the Indie games are is a game in itself. Hell, sometimes even finding a non-indie game that just doesn't happen to be promoted well is difficult. They can't be wasting all that space advertising videogames, after all. They need that precious space so they can sell their paying customers repulsive AXE body spray, beef jerky, cell phone plans, and advertise the latest shitty romantic comedy featuring people you've never heard of.
US Students Say Press Freedoms Go Too Far
One in three U.S. high school students say the press ought to be more restricted, and even more say the government should approve newspaper stories before readers see them, according to a survey being released today.
The survey of 112,003 students finds that 36% believe newspapers should get "government approval" of stories before publishing; 51% say they should be able to publish freely; 13% have no opinion.
Asked whether the press enjoys "too much freedom," not enough or about the right amount, 32% say "too much," and 37% say it has the right amount. Ten percent say it has too little.
The survey of First Amendment rights was commissioned by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and conducted last spring by the University of Connecticut. It also questioned 327 principals and 7,889 teachers.
The findings aren't surprising to Jack Dvorak, director of the High School Journalism Institute at Indiana University in Bloomington. "Even professional journalists are often unaware of a lot of the freedoms that might be associated with the First Amendment," he says.
The survey "confirms what a lot of people who are interested in this area have known for a long time," he says: Kids aren't learning enough about the First Amendment in history, civics or English classes. It also tracks closely with recent findings of adults' attitudes.
"It's part of our Constitution, so this should be part of a formal education," says Dvorak, who has worked with student journalists since 1968.
source: http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2005-01-30-students-press_x.htm
My prices haven't been raised a penny. They were $7.99 before and they're $7.99 now.
YES.
If the only reason you weren't going through the machines as it was is because you didn't want someone keeping an archive of your naughty bits, then you were standing up for the wrong reason. Treat it as any other aspect of your privacy. Exercise it. I won't go through the machines for the same reason I don't just invite an officer into my house or give an officer a reason to snoop around my car. Rights are meaningless if you don't exercise them.
I never heard Joe Sixpack concerned about the tech sector, even during the most trying times of outsourcing, reductions, implosions, etc. Joe Sixpack and the rest of the world only cards when it's auto workers or manufacturing or the person who folds pants at the GAP.
I obviously hope for a better economy for everyone across the board. Lifting all boats and such. However, I don't have any particular concern for Joe Sixpack over anyone else.
So what about students of arts programs or journalism programs or science programs or history programs?
It's not enough to point out to those benefiting from government welfare that they are doing so, but that they are really benefiting from their fellow taxpayer. Maybe when you're in line for your food stamps or taking your half-dozen snot-nosed brats for free medical care, you'll have less of a sense of entitlement and less contempt for those people handing over their hard-earned money to help you the fact that it's brought to your courtesy of the rest of the people on your block is stamped on every dollar of stamps, every medical card, and every piece of government cheese.
What's sickening is that while continuing to rape their funding, Obama greeted the astronauts this week (I think it was on Friday morning, when they have a song or celebrity wake them up) with a speech about how much we value their efforts and how that's why he's laid out new goals for NASA, including going to MARS.
The fucking hypocrisy of saying that at all is repulsive, much less saying it to their faces. It's like telling the division of employees you're going to lay off next week, about how important they are to you and what amazing things you have planned for them to do for the company, in your meeting this week.
I guess that's why all these military actions we have going on at ridiculous expense and no benefit to humanity are so popular. We need to find a way to measure space exploration and scientific discovery in terms of dead brown people, I suppose.
Wow, you're taking the "we ain't got no reason ta' be explorin' no space when there's goddamn potholes in fronta muh house" thing literally.
When it comes down to it, exploration is what has kept our species alive, so far. It's who we are and it's what will keep us from expiring. We have one planet. One home. No backup. If something goes down here, it's the end for every last one of us. To put it bluntly, I'll take furthering our reach into space and eventual ability to leave this festering shithole to strengthen our chances as a species into the future by even one-ten-thousandth of a percent over expanding or repairing a road for a bunch of fat fucking SUVs to slodge fat asses from one city to another any day of the week.
The financial rewards for commercial space exploration are so fucking far off that I don't see things like SpaceX becoming useful for a very long time. If we depend on commercial enterprise to get us somewhere - where space is concerned - we are doomed for the foreseeable future. I agree with the notion of private industry over big government every day of the week, but space is an endeavor that won't benefit commercial investment in the time-frame that commercial enterprises expect returns on those investments. It's an endeavor that speaks to who we are as a species and it's a shame we're trying to reduce it to pointing the finger at "commercial enterprise" and saying "well, they'll probably do it for us" as an excuse to maintain the "fix potholes durp durp durp!" attitude.
All of these billionaires like to float daydreams in the media about space hotels and space travel. None of that is going to pay the bills for our lifetime or the next generation's or the one after that. In a world of companies only looking forward to the next quarter, just how likely is it that a company is going to sink infinite resources into developing things like relaunchable spacecraft (that can do more than just skim the edge of space) in the expectation that they'll be able to start making real money in a century or two?
Then stop spending all the fucking gold you bring in, plus more that you aren't bringing in. Spending more rather than spending wisely is a pretty fucking idiotic idea.
The thing I love most about gaming is ENTERING FUCKING LONG CODES and dealing with complex registration and login bullshit (UBI and EA tend to be the most fucking convoluted).
No, it's not. It's free for ONE PERSON who uses that new copy of the game. Let's say you you're underage and have siblings? Or you have a spouse who games? Or maybe you have roommates or live in a sort of "house of dudes"? Having to pay another $10 for each person to be allowed to play (not to mention, possibly charging separately for each piece of DLC *per person*, depending on the particular piece of DLC in question) is bullshit.
Imagine if you bought Monopoly at the store for $10. You set it out and got the game ready to play. And then you had to pay another $30 so the other three people could be allowed to play. Or maybe if your cable company charged you $500/mo for cable television, because there are four people in your household instead of just one person watching content. Or handing your spouse a copy of a book you just read and they have to pay another $30 to read it.
The problem with all of these companies and all of this nickel-and-dime-ing bullshit is that they're fucking over the primary customer. The customer who is WILLING TO PAY FULL PRICE FOR THEIR GAME IN THE FIRST PLACE.
Yes, a whopping $700 billion per decade. Wow. Why, at $70 billion per year, it'd only take about 107 years before we've saved as much as we spent on all those failed stimulus packages and bailouts! And it would only take about ten years to save as much as we spend in a single year on the social programs you mentioned.
Yes, why make big meaningful cuts, when we can make a trivial one that looks good on the evening news?
Of course, we should cut everywhere we can, but let's stop being pussies about this. Cut these extra nukes. Cut military spending. Cut social security. Cut whatever the fuck has to be cut to bring spending down to an amount lower than revenue. Period. There's no way to make cuts that will be painless to absolutely everyone, so let's stop bullshitting ourselves about "well, we can't cut this, because all those government employees will be out of a job" and "now muh gramma gonna have to choose between her tv dinners and her medication durp durp".
That comment makes no sense. You're basically saying that they built their business on 1997 technology, so there's no reason it shouldn't still be profitable in 2011.
Frankly, I am surprised that so many of my fellow geeks who are presumably my age or even younger are throwing such a fit over fucking DVDs in 2011. I can understand your grandma using DVDs. Maybe even more mom, depending on your age. But DVDs are such a hassle. My home entertainment sees a DVD even less often than any of my computers see a CD. I think I bought the Planet Earth series on BluRay when I got my first PS3, back in 2006. That's probably the last time.